


Queer Collection

by nowhere_dawn_death_phan



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Stand alone stories, one shots, requests available
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_dawn_death_phan/pseuds/nowhere_dawn_death_phan
Summary: This is a series of stand-alone one-shots surrounding queer headcanons I have for the Torchwood characters. I will be accepting requests in the comments but there is no guarantee that I will do them. If a character + specific gender/sexuality has been requested once in an already published chapter, feel free to request them again (but please don't spam me.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	1. Asexual PC Andy

“Aww, you’re so cute.” Gwen teases, and ruffles his hair.  
“Get off,” he replies, shoving her gently and scooting further along the bench away from her. “I’m not cute. Puppies and kittens are cute. Baby chickens are cute. I’m...I’m...”  
“If you say sexy so help me I will dump this ice cream on your head. Andy, you’re about as sexy as a pair of wellingtons.”  
He looks at her, somewhere between insulted and incredulous. “Just because I’m not your type.”  
“You’re not anyone’s type. No, sorry, correction, nobody’s your type.”  
Andy raises his lemonade to his lips and quirks an eyebrow. “Right, just because I don’t want to sleep with people doesn’t mean I can’t be in a relationship.”  
“What would you do then?”  
He looks at her out of the corner of his eye as if she’s just asked him what one add one is. “Hold hands, hug. Go to the movies, or fancy restaurants. Walk in the park, dance in the rain.”  
“Isn’t that what you’ve got me for? That stuff? If you’ve got a best friend, you don’t need a man or a woman or anything. And if you’re not going to sleep with them, what’s the point in even dating someone?”  
He sighs, tips his head back. “I don’t mind having sex- look, this is far too complicated a conversation to be having at noon on what was meant to be a lazy hungover Sunday.”  
“It’s not really that complex, is it? And we’re hardly hungover.”  
He rolls his head on his neck to look at her. “Fine, it’s not a conversation I want to have right now. Once I’ve worked out exactly how I feel, I’ll let you know. For now, I’m not entirely sure myself.”  
“You could talk to Ianto about it. He’s good with emotions. Well, he’s good at experiencing them. Talking about them is another matter. You might be better asking Owen.”  
“I might be better asking that tree.” He teases, pointing to the oak in question.  
“Watch out, it might talk back.” She laughs.  
“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened.”

There’s silence for a moment and then Gwen asks. “So you don’t like me then?”  
“It depends what you mean by that.”  
“You don’t have feelings for me?”  
“I have feelings for you, I like you, you’re my best friend, they’re just not sexual feelings. This isn’t going to be a short conversation is it?”  
“I’m just trying to understand.”  
“It’s not difficult, Gwen. Bet you weren’t playing twenty questions with Ianto when you caught him with Jack, were you?”  
“Well, that made sense.”  
“This makes sense!”  
“I thought you had feelings for me.”  
“Well I don’t, I was wrong, I made a mistake. Sorry to squash your ego and all that, but that’s how it is. I don’t have feelings for anyone. Not in that way, anyway.”  
“Nobody? Not ever?”  
“Not ever.”  
“You’ve never looked at someone and thought that you wanted to shag them? Ever? Not even a little bit?”  
“Not to my knowledge, no.”  
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”  
“Exactly. And from what Owen’s said, I think I’ll continue to miss out, thanks.”

“But-but why?”  
Andy sighed, looking across at her. “Why what?”  
“Like, it just doesn’t appeal to you?”  
“Yeah. I just don’t get it.”  
“And that doesn’t bother you?”  
“Why should it?” Andy asked, voice a little snappy.  
“Because it’s weird.”  
“That’s subjective.”  
“Big word for a hungover Sunday.”  
He laughed despite himself, unable to stay mad at Gwen for long. “I’m feeling adventurous.”  
She turned to look at him, expression serious. “Okay, so you’re what, asexual?”  
Andy wiggled his fingers. “Somewhere on the ace spectrum, haven’t pinned down exactly where yet, but yeah, leaning towards asexual.”  
She nodded. “Cool.”  
Andy looked at her, once again a little disbelieving. “That all you’re going to say? I pour my heart out to you and that’s all you have to say?”  
“You didn’t pour your heart out to me, Andrew Davidson, we had a discussion, that's all. And two, I’m really not fussed. Aside from Rhys, I don’t think I’ve spoken to a straight person in months.”  
“Bold of you to assume Rhys is straight,” Andy muttered, and Gwen smacked his shoulder lightly.  
“I’m just saying!”  
Gwen shuffled across the bench and lay her head on Andy’s shoulder. “You’re such an idiot, sometimes, you could have told me this months ago, you know? And you’ve got no stupid excuse about being in love with me to make up for not being at the wedding now.”  
Andy sighed, drumming his fingers on his knee. “I’ll buy you an ice cream if you shut up.”  
“Deal.”


	2. Genderfluid Owen Harper

Owen bounded up the stairs to the main level of the hub, small whiteboard swinging on a piece of string from his left hand. He carefully hung the whiteboard off the top of the staircase and adjusted it so it faced the main hub before nodding at it proudly and making his way back down the stairs.  
As soon as he had disappeared down into his work area, there was the sound of footsteps as Jack, Tosh and Ianto approached one by one, reading the sign before turning and leaving.  
Owen watched each of them approach, smiling a little. They’d started off with one of them, usually Jack, reading it and announcing it out to the whole room, but Gwen had decided that maybe that was making more of a fuss than needed to be made. Owen didn’t mind either way, as long as the sign got read.  
The change in the Hub was immediate, people calling out across the room, and Owen smiled a little. It was an unwritten rule that nobody spoke before the whiteboard went up, never one officially decided on, but one that happened anyway.  
He walked back up the stairs to his work desk, sitting down at his chair and drumming his fingers on the tabletop.  
Ianto placed a coffee down in front of him, and Owen thanked him with a smile, taking a sip. Ianto just nodded before moving over to Tosh’s desk and placing her cup down as well.

No more than ten minutes later, he did the same at Gwen’s desk, an indication that Ianto’s sixth sense had picked up that she was on her way. Sure enough, as soon as Ianto had put the cup down, the cog door opened and Gwen stepped through. Owen turned in his chair to look at her, head resting on the palm of his hand.  
She went straight to the top of the stairs, looked at the whiteboard and then leant over the handrail, looking for him.  
After a moment she turned and saw him at his desk, giving a quick wave before heading to her own.  
The whiteboard rule had been in place since he’d come out, which had been a little before Ianto had joined, but it had taken Gwen a while to get used to it nonetheless. He didn’t mind, not really, because she was one of those people that tried, and he respected somebody that tried and failed more than somebody that didn’t try at all.

The whiteboard sat there all day, unmoving, faithful. It was dirty, smudged by repeated writing. Owen had been threatening to clean it for weeks but could just never find the time. The words at the top, the thick black capitals, were written in permanent marker, not drywipe, because they never changed. They never had cause to. Sometimes the letters in drywipe stayed the same for days on end, weeks at times, just being written over when they started to rub off, and sometimes he’d change them halfway through the day. When he did that, he’d go back down into the autopsy bay and wait for everyone to line back up and read it again before emerging. Nobody minded, but he wasn’t a fan of watching them read it, he’d rather pretend he was out of sight until it was over. Some days he had to have a grammar lesson with them, run through conjugations and pronunciation, but over the months Tosh had amassed a spreadsheet on her laptop, and she’d give everyone a refresh every so often to save Owen the awkwardness of having to do it himself. Again, not that he much minded their little sit-down discussions, he found he enjoyed them much more when he knew he wasn’t fighting for the respect of the people he was talking to, but rather educating them. He’d done quite enough fighting for respect already, and it was nice to not have to feel like he had to prove the validity of his existence to people that he cared about. Again, he’d done quite enough of that already at various points in his life, and this made for a refreshing change of pace. 

At the end of the day, once Jack finally allowed them to go home, Owen walked back over to the whiteboard, picking it up with a smile and swinging it from his hand as he made his way down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, lay the board on his work surface and debated wiping it clean for a moment before deciding against it. He took a step back, studying the small board with an odd sense of appreciation, and then grabbed his jacket from where it lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.  
Long after he’d gone home, the board sat propped up against the wall faithfully, declaring to all who saw it - DR. HARPERS PRONOUNS FOR TODAY: HE/HIM


	3. Asexual!Demiboy!Andy/Enby!Owen

Andy lay on the sofa with his head in Owen’s lap, Owen combing their fingers through the blonde almost curls of Andy’s hair. They were watching a show on TV without really watching, Andy’s eyes were closed, and Owen was looking down at him with an expression of concentrated fondness. Their apartment had always seemed too big, their bed too empty, the rooms too bright, too false, a poor attempt at acting like they had a life. The books went unread, the TV unwatched. Now though, with two of them here, it felt better, it felt right. Everything felt like it fit, for once. Owen finally felt at home in their house. Before it had been a necessity, somewhere to go because Jack would lecture them if they spent too much time in the Hub, but for the first time since they moved in, it felt like more.  
“You can go, if you want.” Andy muttered sleepily, turning onto his back and opening his eyes to look at Owen.  
“What?”  
Andy shrugged. “Gwen said you’d go out every night, get drunk, bring somebody home or let them take you home. I want you to know that you still can. Go, I don’t mind. I don’t like having sex, you do. As long as you don’t do it behind my back, you can sleep with whoever you want. Just tell me you’re going out and I won’t wait up for you. We can both be mature about it.”  
Owen shook their head. “No. Sex was just something to do to fill the time, to make me feel something. I don’t need it.”  
“Owen.” Andy almost completely omitted the ‘O’ with emphasis on the ‘wen’, sitting himself up next to them. “I’m used to it. Seriously, I don’t mind. Maybe I should, but I don’t. It’s not like it matters, you choose to come home to me at the end of the day and that’s all I care about.”  
“And, just shush.” Owen said, changing the channel on the television to some old black and wide movie, thumbing the volume up.

Andy sat up, taking the remote out of Owen’s hand and muting the movie, which was perfectly fine by Owen because there was only twenty-four minutes left, so it was too late for them to get properly invested. Andy knew not to push the matter. It may have worked with Gwen but Owen wasn’t like that - you couldn’t push or they’d shut you out. So he changed the subject.  
“How was work?”  
Owen tilted their head back. “ _And…_ ” Andy’s nickname came out as a whine. “I thought we weren’t gonna do all this...domestic crap.”  
“What are we supposed to do then?” Andy asked with a smile. “Come on, how was work?”  
“Alright. I dissected an alien and got shit on by a dinosaur. It was about right for a Friday. How was your day off?”  
“Fine. Got a bit of cleaning done, a bit of shopping.”  
“Oh, god-” Owen cut in, as if remembering something, “-Jack put me on the phone to UNIT earlier, he knows how much I can’t stand UNIT. I swear he does it just to piss me off. So anyway, I’m on the phone to this bastard from UNIT, smarmy little prick. And he starts going off about “Mr Harper said this” and “that’s not what he told me” and I’m thinking, Christ almighty, I know what I told you, I’ve got the file right here. Course the bastard didn’t realise that he was talking to me both times, so he starts going on and on about all this shit and I’m getting seriously wound up, right?”  
Andy just nods, listening to Owen.  
“And when I finally get the information that I need from him, Jack has the gall to chastise me for being grumpy, as if I hadn’t just spent the last forty-five minutes being misgendered - _to myself.”_ Owen slaps their knee, and Andy resists the urge to laugh a little at the fact their annoyance is still so cleanly buried behind amusement.  
“Y’know, just because we’re both amabs that exist outside of the gender binary, people refuse to respect us and it drives me crazy. It’s worse for you, I suppose, being asexual as well.”  
Andy sighed. “At least my pronouns align with my assigned gender? Can’t really be misgendered.”  
“But you have your identity invalidated because people don’t respect that you don’t identify as a cis male due to the fact your pronouns match your assigned gender. It’s all bollocks anyway-” Owen waved a hand, “-gender, it’s bollocks. Who gives a shit? I don’t. You don’t. The guys at the Hub don’t. Fuck gender. Fuck everything.”  
Andy had to laugh then. “Fuck everything. The Owen Harper motto. In more ways than one.”  
Owen rolled their eyes, picking up the cushion that sat between them and whacking Andy on the shoulder. “Funny. Very funny.”  
Andy laughed, raising a hand to block the clumsily playful blow, pushing the cushion and knocking it down onto the floor. As he went to reach for it, Owen gave his shoulder a shove and Andy toppled forwards, catching hold of Owen’s sleeve and bringing them down onto the floor with him.  
Owen lay there on their back, breathless and laughing. “Fuck me, Andy.”  
An equally breathless but laughing reply came a few seconds later. “...No thanks.”


	4. Trans!John Hart/Ianto

John pulled Ianto by the hand through the crowds of some large building on whatever distant planet they were on. They’d been to so many recently that Ianto had lost track of the names, the locations. It was loud in here, he knew that much. Loud and bright. A casino, perhaps, Ianto thought it may have been. The crowd jostled and jeered and Ianto kept his head down and his grip tight on John’s hand.  
They broke through the crowd, John immediately moving over to a bar, sliding up onto a barstool, leaning on his elbow. He ordered a drink, something Ianto didn’t recognise the name of but that John was clearly fond of from the confident way he asked. It was a pale purple when it was set in front of him, slightly frothy, like beer, but it didn’t smell like anything Ianto could put his finger on. John drank it quickly and ordered another, drumming his fingers on the polished wooden bartop.  
He turned to Ianto, smiling a little. “Eye candy, do me a favour, find us a gaming table. I’ll be over in a minute, just going to eye up the competition.”  
Ianto had been right then, it was a casino, of sorts, and he wandered aimlessly through the vast room, so large he couldn’t see any of the walls, but looking up showed there were two more floors above them. He didn’t bother trying to keep in John’s line of sight - he’d find him eventually.

He didn’t recognise most of the games being played, and found an empty table in the corner, sitting down and studying the board in front of him. It looked like a ludo board almost, but had three different boards suspended at varying heights, and a set of wrapped cards sat on the middle one next to three dice, two bearing the numbers 1 to 6, and the final one scored with a series of odd shapes that meant nothing to him.  
There was a thud as John sat down opposite him, smiling. “They’re playing holographic chess over there. It’s practically a vintage game by now, four centuries old, so the stakes aren’t high. There’s Earth Trivia, but it’s the thirty second century edition, and it’s not in English. There are a few rounds of strip poker happening on the second floor - some things don’t go out of style - but I know that might not be to your taste.”  
John looked down at the game on the table in front of him, and then smiled a little wider. “Generate. You ever played Generate?”  
Ianto shook his head, and as he went to speak, John interrupted him, patting the seat next to him. “Come here, you’ll learn quick, it’s not that complicated.” John hit a small button at the edge of the table, and there were several dull beeps in the near vicinity.  
Ianto obediently moved to sit next to John as a blowfish came over, taking the seat opposite John. He was holding a small black box that was lit up red at one side. John hit the button on the table again, and the light went off. Ianto presumed it was some sort of pager, alerting people to a game if they wanted to play it.

“Name your stake.” The blowfish said, in a scraping but somehow melodically lilting voice. John sighed, digging through the pockets of his jacket. He lay a handful of coins from the second planet they’d visited, a premium gift card for a six star hotel that he’d stolen from a billionaire on the third planet, and his vortex manipulator.  
The blowfish hummed appreciatively, reaching for the manipulator, but John batted his hand away. “Not yet.”  
The alien huffed and then dug through his own pockets, producing a plastic bag of small gems and what appeared to be a handgun, and John wolf-whistled.  
“You really willing to part with all that?” His tone held a sort of grudging respect.  
“Are you?”  
“Touche. Mind if I deal?”  
“Be my guest.”  
John reached for the sealed pack of cards, shedding off the plastic covering. A way of making sure they hadn’t been tampered with, Ianto assumed.  
He was a little surprised to see that the deck of cards was exactly the same as you’d find on earth in the twenty first century, he thought they’d be different, somehow.  
John turned to Ianto as he shuffled the cards. “Take a look around, if you want. The first three rounds are always boring. Just make sure you’re back in time to catch the good stuff.”  
Ianto shook his head. “I’ll stay.”  
John was right, the first three rounds were boring, and even once they got into the swing of the game, Ianto had no idea what was happening. There were no counters or place markers of any kind, so how you knew who was winning, he couldn’t begin to speculate. The cards and dice seemed to be used alternately, though the one with the symbols was left untouched. The cards were stacked onto the various levels once they’d been drawn, and though there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, occasionally one of them would take a card back and insert it into their deck, though the penalty for this was missing their following turn.  
Eventually, John reached for the final die, rolling it neatly. Ianto didn’t see the result, but John laid down the rest of his cards, flipping over a few from the second level of the board, smiling triumphantly. The conditions for winning didn’t make sense to Ianto, but John clearly had. 

The blowfish hissed air from between his gills, but tossed the bag and gun across the table without a word.  
“Pleasure doing business with you!” John called gleefully at the retreating aliens back. He smiled again and hit the button at the side of the table and then turned to Ianto, leaning in conspiratorially. “You know what I love about this place?”  
“What?”  
“The way they treat gender identity here is so...liberating. The freedom of expression - God, its magnificent! They don’t care. Do you have any idea how freeing it is to be surrounded by people who - just. Don’t. Care?”  
Ianto was about to answer again when somebody else sat down at the table. They seemed human, maybe from a later century. There was a glint in John’s eye. He recognised them somehow.  
The bets were made, John’s the same as last time, the unknown man’s a small jar with a rubber stopper filled with what seemed to be sand, and a thin strip of gold plating. John won again, and then stood, taking the seat opposite Ianto and suggesting they play against each other so Ianto could learn the rules without the pressure of great stakes if he lost.  
Ianto learned that the cards served as placeholders for each round, and that the symbol on them represented a number of points. Ace was one, Jack, Queen, King were Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, and the rest were self-explanatory. The number on the two dice thrown together represented the number of cards you laid down from your hand, though if you rolled above eight, that translated into being able to take the extra number of cards back at some point. The aim was to have an equal number of points in the cards in your hand and those on the board, only you couldn’t see the value of the cards on the board, you had to remember them and choose to put cards back in your hand accordingly. Once you thought you had the same number of points, you rolled the third dice, which Ianto discovered actually only contained two symbols, each repeated three times, one meaning win and one meaning lose. If you rolled a “win” you got to turn over your cards on the board and add up the number of points on them. If you rolled a “lose” play continued and you rolled again on your next turn. If you rolled a “win” and the value of the cards on the board was the same as in your hand then you won. If it’s not, then your opponent won.  
Why exactly the game was called Generate, Ianto wasn’t sure, but he didn’t agree with John’s description of it as being “not that complicated”, as even with him talking it through step by step, Ianto struggled. John beat him six games in a row before Ianto finally managed to do marginally better - upon turning his pile over, he was only out by twenty eight points - four cards. 

Eventually John went back to playing against others, Ianto sat in the booth next to him, one of John’s hands tracing lazy circles on his knee as he played. Ianto watched, trying to keep track of the game but often failing, losing count of which cards John had picked back up, and how that changed his score.  
Some of the games lasted only five or ten minutes, some went on closer to what felt like an hour. Ianto leaned against John’s shoulder under the pretence of looking at his cards, though he was exhausted and was more looking for a few minutes rest than anything else. He must have fallen asleep eventually, or at least zoned out, because he startled a little when John gently nudged his shoulder.  
“Come on, eye candy.” There was the sound of coins rattling under a layer of fabric. “Drinks on me.”


End file.
